Welcome to the blog of a living being on planet Earth, a holder of (man-mandated) citizenship of India, and so on and so forth! I hope you find it worthwhile to observe the parts of my journey in this lifetime that I share here. "natant" means floating.

December 10, 2009

life in financial markets: home bias in markets such as india & china!

Unfailingly, over the last 10-12 years, we have clearly seen a strong and sustained home bias in the writings and views of almost very economist and market/investment analyst/guru in fast-growing economies such as India and China.

I think, half of this is based on genuine factors but the other half is on account of complete blindness to the internal developments, their causes and long-term implications.

The same is, however, not the case with North American and West European economists and market analysts as there are always a decent number of them who do not hold themselves back from highlighting the negatives in their own countries' economic developments.

Nowadays, Indians and Chinese economists/analysts are also beginning to get extremely confident that their countries' economies will soon become larger than the western economies. No problem with this confidence but then these same very jingoist Indian and Chinese economists/analysts lose their courage when it comes to aggressive lobbying by western companies to set up large industrial projects in all violation of environmental, forest and tribal laws and at tax rates much lower than those applicable to domestic companies.

In the ongoing tussle at Copenhagen climate change summit between India/China/etc on one hand and US/UK/Australia/etc on other hand, I fail to understand why the former does not say 'yes' to firm commitments on carbon emissions and then charge a hefty 'carbon tax' on all their exports to the latter. This is a direct way of making western consumers pay for their high carbon footprint. Also, a high carbon tax should be imposed on the consumption of the very affluent within India/China/etc as their carbon footprint is at par with the affluent of the West.